The Ministry of Electronics & IT vide its press release dated 1st November 2021 has released a document clarifying the doubts and explaining the nuances of the due diligence to be followed by intermediaries as part of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
In order to ensure an Open, Safe & Trusted Internet and accountability of intermediaries including the social media intermediaries to users, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (hereinafter referred to as “IT Rules, 2021”) on 25th February, 2021.
The Rules provide guidelines to be followed by publishers of news & current affairs and also online curated content providers.
Through this FAQ document, it has been clarified that the IT rules 2021 would benefit a general user, who is using any intermediary platform. These Rules specially provide for increased safety of users and also ensure accountability of intermediaries to the users;
The IT Rules, 2021 define ‘social media intermediary’ as an intermediary which primarily or solely enables online interaction between two or more users and allows them to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify or access information using its services.
To qualify as a social media intermediary, enabling of online interactions should be the primary or sole purpose of the intermediary. Therefore, typically, an entity which has some other primary purpose, but only incidentally enables online interactions, may not be considered as a social media intermediary.
